"The Word of The Lord came to Jonah, son of Amittai: 'Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before Me.' But Jonah ran far away from The Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from The Lord." Jonah 1:1-3 (NIV)
God spoke to the prophet Jonah and told him to go to Nineveh, a city where the people worshipped idle gods. Jonah did not want to go the this foreign country and preach to those people because he did not want them to be saved. So he ran from God and went in the opposite direction. This is the only recorded example of a prophet refusing to do what God told him to do.
There is a price to pay for flat out refusal to do the will of God. There is really no running away from God because He is omnipresent and is everywhere all at the same time. Jonah paid for his refusal to obey God (Jonah 1:15-16), and we will pay for our disobedience. Because of God's goodness and His mercy, after our punishment we can return to His good graces by repenting and asking for His forgiveness. Prayer changes things but we must have a change of heart first.
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